


on a verseless song

by hecleretical



Category: Pyre (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort, chae has done nothing wrong ever, hurt/comfort from an evil snake wizard, implied past violence/injury, milithe is one hundred percent going to burn everything to the ground, the vagabond girl is named chae
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-14
Updated: 2020-02-14
Packaged: 2021-02-27 19:28:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22621027
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hecleretical/pseuds/hecleretical
Summary: chae reflects after being forced to move on. the scribes are always with her.
Relationships: Molten Milithe & Vagabond Girl (Pyre)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 17
Collections: Chocolate Box - Round 5





	on a verseless song

**Author's Note:**

  * For [laughingpineapple](https://archiveofourown.org/users/laughingpineapple/gifts).



Her nose still hurt, though it was bleeding less. Only sometimes, looking out into the reedy grass where things she didn't know were, she thought she saw something sometimes, and it would start bleeding again. The shirt she was wearing was already stained dark bloody red in drip marks down the front. She'd tried washing it and it hadn't much been cleaned.

She was hiding in a falling-down shed at the edge of a marshy field. It was only several miles out of town. Chae worried they would come find her out here, but her nose hurt too badly and it was hard to breathe sometimes and she still had aches and bruises and-- she stopped herself from crying. The Scribes were watching. She could stay here a few days and nothing bad would happen, nothing bad would happen again.

It was Milithe she felt close then, it was the Wild Witch.

She taught Chae several things while she stayed in the marshy hut. What plants could do, and mushrooms, and lichens that grew on stones. Witch-garlic could never be eaten but if it was boiled, it turned the water all clear so she could drink and it wouldn't make her mouth taste brackish or metal? And there was a squat brown-capped mushroom with a thick white stem that was medicine to harps but it was sick-making for humans and poison to anything else, and then a delicately laced mushroom all taupe and cream that made you light and numb and painless.

She could take that with water, Milithe said, she could chew it, but she shouldn't swallow it or chew more than one big one a day. If she felt pain more than that she would have to be brave, she would have to be brave and try to stand it.

There was a sharp angry sound to her voice, when Chae heard her? She thought at first it was at her. She thought Milithe was angry at her maybe, and the Scribes, at what had happened, and she did not want to upset them when they had given her so much, she didn't. Chae sat in the broken-down shed and looked out over the marsh and the tall reedy grass and muddy water. She dug up the knobby roots of witch-garlic, it was not garlic at all but more of an onion, and she boiled water with wood she found by the shed and tried to clean her shirt. It was a shirt she had gotten in the last town.

And when Chae hummed or sang to herself it was quietly; and when the pain was too much and her nose bled and she cried she tried to do that quietly, too.

It is broken, Milithe told her. When Golathanian hath broken his nose he saith it hath taken time to heal aright. 'Twill bleed somewhat then, till such time.

I know, she said, and then, I'm sorry.

No! Several voices joined in unison on that angry word. Do _not_ be sorry.

We are _not_ angry with thee, Milithe told her, voice so sharp it could cut. _Never_ with thee.

There was an ache in her chest; Chae felt it like a hole to the center of the earth. She clutched the blood-spattered front of her shirt with a hand as if she could stifle it, it didn't, it didn't go away.

"Am I wrong?" she asked. "Am I wrong to be like this?"

We were driven from our home many times, she tells Chae. 'Tis a cold, small world thou livest in. Thou art never wrong.

Chae lay back against the damp earth, the damp grass of the little hill with the shed on which she sat, and looking up at the dull grey sky she began to cry messily, like a small child.

And the Wild Witch sang to her. It was rich, and low; from out of her throat, the way Chae learned much later that bog-crones sing, with no words, no key, no tone. The notes next to each other in odd patterns and shapes......rough, and comforting, rich and sad. What she sang Chae didn't know, a song who knew how old. And everything came out, all the pain and ache and the pain and ache in her chest that was worse, and she lay back and watched birds fly over the grey sky through thick blurry tears, and cried.

There were other things the Scribes showed her, too. Where lilies were, in long low pools between the reeds; how birds flew, over and across the field, and through the tall grass. Her nose bled for some time before it healed. And when she cried Milithe would sing to her-- only to her, she said.

Chae the Changeling, they called her in that town.

No changeling, Milithe told her, voice growing taught. Merely a girl. Merely Chae. A cold, small world.


End file.
